


The Survivors General Store

by 1bluesapphire



Category: Titanic (1997)
Genre: Family Reunions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5620951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1bluesapphire/pseuds/1bluesapphire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the sinking of Titanic, Jack, Cora, Helga, Fabrizio, and Tommy all settle down in Wisconsin and eventually run a general store. Rose brings up her's and Jack's daughter Jacqueline Cora Dawson on her own, believing that Jack is dead. Will fate smile upon them all and reunite them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memory of a Nightmare Long Ago

The Survivors General Store

My 60th story in general, my first fic of the new year, and my third Titanic fic, but unlike the others, a num- HEY! Wait a minute! It's my first fic of the new year, and it's January the first, so...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! From yours truly, 1bluesapphire, proud resident of New Zealand. Have a great one :)

Anyway, as I was saying, unlike the other Titanic fics I have written, Jack survives (not that Rose knows it), Rose actually gets into a lifeboat, and others survive, as well. It's called "The Survivor's General Store" because that's what some of the survivors do for a living.

Enjoy!

All around her, she could hear the screams of terrified passengers as the almighty Titanic slowly but surely sank around them. She herself was terrified as she followed her uncle Jack and the others back to the little restaurant in third class.

Being only six, Cora Cartmell couldn't entirely understand why they had returned back to third class, when, she thought, they should be running for the lifeboats. But she also didn't understand much about how first class looked down on them like they were ants, and not worth living.

She and her uncle were following a curly-haired Irishman, behind them, an Italian man who was desperately pulling a Norwegian woman with him.

Said Irishman was using the broken leg of a table to smash a nearby window. "Tommy! Are you crazy!?" Her uncle yelled in disbelief, as if he couldn't believe what the Irishman had done.

"It's the only way we're getting off, unless you rather go down with the ship. Now, if you want any chance to live, grab a piece of debris, and jump out that window." He said, giving everyone a look that said that they weren't to argue with him.

Quickly, everybody grabbed a piece of debris that would support them in the water. Cora managed to find a gigantic soup pot, which she held onto as she jumped cleanly into the water. The pot, which still had a lid on, fortunately fell apart, thus allowing her to, with some difficulty, climb in.

As the others joined her, they all grabbed each others hands, and looked every which way for something that would them out of the water. They noticed several people floundering about, trying to stay alive, but, even with the twenty lifeboats nearby, in one of which Jack hoped Rose was, they eventually gave way to death.

Then, just as it appeared there was no hope at all, Cora noticed, a few miles away, lights floating on the ocean.

"Look," She said pointing, and the others did so. When they saw what she had seen, they were all relived, and began to use spatulas that Tommy had found in the huge utensils box he was awkwardly lying in, in order to row themselves towards the lights.  
PAGE BREAK  
Now the lights that Cora had seen, followed by the others, were the lights of the nearest ship, the SS Californian. Although not a single crew member was awake, that quickly changed when they were alerted by the sounds of shouting and banging. Tired and grumpy, the crew slowly made their way towards the deck.  
A man by the name of Cyril Evans glanced over the right hand side, and when he spotted five people floating in the water, he whistled to his fellow crew members, who immediately assisted the five of them aboard.

Then, to the astonishment of them all, Tommy, who'd been thinking, suddenly marched over to Cyril Evans, and slapped him in the face. The 20 year old went sprawling to the ground, or at least he would have done, if not for the others who assisted him.

"Are you pazzo!?" Cried an aghast Fabrizio. Tommy angrily pointed to the man's chest, where he was wearing a badge that said he was the wireless operator.

"I believe you just called me either crazy or stupid, but he's the wireless operator." He said coldly, before getting right into the man's face, and snarled, "Ever consider picking up the damn phone once in a while?"

The younger man gave him a look of confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"The six of us were on the bloody Titanic, which, I must inform you, SANK! Also, a number of passengers have died, and we might have as well. If you ask me, people should change some rules regarding accidents at sea." He spat.

He then eyed every other crew member, before eyeing the captain. Although he didn't slap him, he did give him a wonderful black eye.

"And I deserved that because?" Inquired the 35 year-old man, wincing in pain.

"Because, you bastard, you've probably been captain long enough to know that as a general rule, ships don't typically fire rockets just for the pretty light show they create." Tommy threw him a filthily look, and said, "I hope you can sleep at night knowing you have indirectly caused the lives of over a thousand people to end."

Two days later, the Californian made it's berth in Wisconsin, and all of the survivors were happy to leave. Within days, Jack and his friends were once again among family. After a time, Jack's cousin Philip had offered them a job at the general store in which he worked.

The sound of knocking pulled fourteen year old Cora Dawson from the dream of a nightmare, which, eight years ago to the day, had been a frightening reality.

AN: So, I apologize if this is a little daft, but I'd like to know what you think. HAPPY NEW YEAR :)


	2. Rose's Life

It had been eight years since the Titanic, Jack, Cora, and many others had met their end on a chilly April evening. Rose had managed to steal away from her mother and Cal, and, now living under the name of Rose Dawson, had settled down in Florida and made a life for herself.

She had become a kindergarten teacher, because of her love for children, and it didn't take long for the parents to trust her implicitly with their children's safety.

Some mothers, who had grown up knowing each other, and lived a second class life, invited Rose to join them once a fortnight for a tea party, or even, if they felt they had enough, to go and buy a new dress or two.  
However, when two months had passed since the tragedy, Rose had suddenly found herself feeling rather ill in the mornings. She expressed her concerns to one of her good friends, a Hispanic woman called Rosamund, who had a three-year old daughter called Lulu.

"Oh, I do believe I know what the trouble is, and it means that there is good news coming your way." Rosamund exclaimed excitedly, as she watched Lulu play with a couple of dolls nearby.  
"Well, what is it?" Rose asked, as she helped herself to a carrot stick, part of their afternoon tea.  
"My dear Rose, I do believe you are going to bring a child into the world soon." Came the excited reply.

Rose gasped, and for the first time since the disaster, realized that she hadn't completely lost Jack. For if her friend was right, and she was pregnant, then it was Jack's baby, for she'd never had sex with Cal.  
Despite the fact that he had been attempting to buy her love for him, a love she didn't have, he'd promised that they would not have sex until their wedding night.

Having escaped the wedding, it all came down to the fact that the baby or babies she carried were Jack's, and not Cal's.  
Sure enough, on January the sixteenth, late by two days, Rose gave birth to a healthy and beautiful little girl. Although she was only a few days old, on the twentieth, it became clear that Jacqueline Cora Dawson was going to be a red head, like her mother, but with blue eyes like her father.

Rose had given her daughter the feminine version of her father's name, in order to keep him alive in her heart, and her middle name, Cora, well, she remembered that Jack had called Cora "My best girl," and knew, that had he lived, he would have called his daughter "My best little girl."

PAGE BREAK  
As the years went by, Rose and Jacqueline made a comfortable life for themselves by making clothes and doing weekly shopping for some of the old folks.

They had a comfortable life, enough to get by, but it was nothing like what Rose had had for her first seventeen years of life. Of course, Rose couldn't care less, because she may have been a lady of class on the outside, she had been a bird trapped in a cage, desperate to be free.

With help from Jack most of the way, she had broken free from her cage, and had renewed that fiery spirit.  
Still, she missed his sunny disposition, and every fifteenth of April, she was sentimental and cried, because her daughter had never got to know her father.

Every sixteenth of January, she and Jacqueline would go to the park, where, captivated by winter's beauty, Jacqueline, who had obviously inherited her father's talents, would draw what she felt like. And whenever she showed her mother what she had drawn, she'd always say, "Your daddy would have been so proud of "his best little girl.""  
However, she didn't know that a crisis of sorts, which would soon occur, would bring happiness to her and her daughter.


	3. Growing Up In Wisconsin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst Rose brought her and Jack's daughter, Jacqueline, Jack and the other survivors were making a life for themselves in Wisconsin....

Growing Up in Wisconsin  
AN: It's been a while since I've updated, so this chapter is going to be longer. Enjoy!  
Previously:  
However, she didn't know that a crisis of sorts, which would soon occur, would bring happiness to her and her daughter.  
Whilst Rose was bringing up her daughter Jacqueline, who was her last remaining piece of Jack, she didn't know that in Wisconsin, Jack was bringing up Cora, who, from time to time, still called him "Uncle Jack."  
He wasn't the only one bringing up a kid, either: about a month after they had settled into Jack's hometown of Chippewa Falls, Helga and Fabrizio had gotten married in St. Paul's Cathedral, and nine months after that, had brought into the world a little girl called Annette Maria De Rossi, who had inherited her mother's blonde hair but her father's brown eyes.

Tommy, on the other hand, had become infatuated with Jack's twin sister, Lauren Sophia Dawson, and they had married a year later. Two months before they married, Lauren discovered that, during a night when she and Tommy had both been drunk, they had had sex.  
Of course, when a woman suddenly puts on weight, demands food even if she doesn't like it, and has morning sickness, what else could it have been?  
So, seven months after their wedding, Lauren and Tommy became the proud parents of Theodora Lynette Ryan, who inherited her father's unruly curly hair, and her mother's dark blue eyes.

PAGE BREAK  
Now, eight years later, Cora was now fourteen, Annette was seven, and Theodora was six. The two younger cousins looked up to Cora as an excellent role model, which she was. Young students who had started, and generally, therefore felt out of place, were well welcomed by the older girls, and Cora especially made sure that they knew where to go.

After school every day, the three girls would help their parents in the general store, which always did a roaring trade. This was helped by the delicious pastries that the girls made, and the need for other essentials. Another reason why the store was so popular that even school kids would hang out in the cafe after school, was that everything was cheap.

On the Thursday morning that our story starts, the sound of a knock on her bedroom door pulled Cora from the vivid nightmare she had had.  
"Come in," she croaked, a little breathless. The door opened to reveal her Uncle Jack holding a plate of toast smothered with honey, towards her. A copy of the Chippewa Times was wedged under his arm, as he took in her expression.  
"Are you feeling alright, Cora?" Jack enquired concerned. She looked rather pale, and she was shaking like a leaf.  
"Nightmare," she said, her voice shaking.  
Jack nodded in understanding and held out the toast and paper to her. She gratefully accepted them and unfolded the paper.  
Her brow furrowed in anger as she read "Florida School Destroyed By Fire, Deliberately Set," as the paper's headline.  
"Do you think," she said, as she handed back the plate, "that our school needs more teachers?"  
Her uncle thought for a moment before he nodded. "Yes, at least another art teacher, and maybe another music teacher."  
Cora nodded thoughtfully, before handing back the paper as well, and then proceeded to get out of bed.

PAGE BREAK  
Mr. Phillips, the headmaster of Chippewa Falls Area School, surveyed Cora and Jack in front of him. They had just suggested that he hire a teacher from Florida.  
"Well, like you say, we do need another art teacher, and another music teacher." Mr. Phillips said, smiling at the two Dawsons.  
As they turned to leave, he called out, "Mr. Dawson, may I get you to buy some more art supplies next Monday? We'll need more if we get a new teacher."  
Jack stopped, nodded at his boss, said "Of course, sir," and he and Cora went to get ready for the school day.  
AN: Hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
